They are not designed to kill outright but to inflict horrible wounds especially to the legs and genitals which besides crippling the

They are not designed to kill outright, but to inflict horrible wounds, especially to the legs and genitals, which, besides crippling the victims, overload the medical services.However, "dual-use" mines, which can destroy vehicles and maim and kill, are increasingly available. The Red Cross is opposing the definition of anti-personnel mines as those "primarily designed" to maim or kill people, as this could render any future agreement ambiguous. They were intended to protect the larger anti-tank mines against attempts to clear them. There are an estimated 4 million mines in Bosnia, but they have taken their heaviest toll in Cambodia. In both cases the conflicts in which they were laid are now over but their scourge remains.Until now the British government has supported the view that anti-personnel mines remain a legitimate weapon of war.

It failed to reach a decision on anti-personnel mines.An estimated 100 million anti-personnel mines are scattered across the world, and they cause an estimated 20,000 casualties a year, mostly to farmers, other civilians and children They also kill livestock. Experts estimate the plague of anti-personnel land-mines is now hindering development and reconstruction in more than 35 countries. The move follows indications that senior members of the United States military favour a total ban, and studies by the Red Cross and other independent organisations which cast doubt on the military effectiveness of anti-personnel mines. The first session of the review conference in September 1995 banned the use and transfer of laser weapons specifically designed to blind people - the first time that a specific new kind of weapon had been banned since 1868. Britain is today expected to announce a change in its policy on anti-personnel land-mines, and to tell the United Nations Weapons Convention Review Conference which opened in Geneva yesterday that it will support a world-wide ban on their manufacture, export and use. It demands a balance between rights and responsibilities, between individualism and community, between family and sexual liberty, discipline and freedom In this he talks not only to the electors, but to God.. He would play the Good Samaritan, but would feel obliged to ask penetrating questions about whether the victim had contributed in some way to his plight."There is little cynicism in Tony Blair; it comes from the heart and that is what scares old liberals. They would rather believe this was all a clever electoral trick: once in power he will cast off his cloak and with one bound we shall all be free But that Victorian moralism is deep-dyed.

He does quite like the idea of bad young men being marched about in camps. He has a passion about single parents and a genuine anxiety for the welfare of their disadvantaged children. Workfare appeals to him because it is for the real moral good of the unemployed. In one useful sound bite he is "the party of the family", but with the next breath he explains this means practical help for working mothers - so the magic coin "family values" is cleverly displayed in a public place.The Hattersley tendency says Blair means what he says.One says: "He is all of a piece and not pretending. He may not mean what some of his words seek to suggest, but he is a Wilsonian figure, delicately balancing reasonable freedom with reasonable concern about crime.Now does Tony Blair really mean what he says? Little of what he has said can be pinned on him. After Howard, he will blow like a cool wind of reason through the fetid air of the Home Office corridors.